Comments on: Thoughts on speed reading

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:17:34 +0000

There are lots of free programs out there as well, and lots of tests that you can play around with as well. You don't even need software if you practice the techniques on your own and test frequently.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:17:34 +0000

By: Jo Vermeulen

Jo Vermeulen — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:24:50 +0000

I actually went through a few of these books. Indeed, the guideline that I found most useful was to never read an article or book without setting your goals and the time you want to spend on it first. This is in fact also the underlying principle of Buzan's MMOST technique. But this is actually just a “normal” study technique. First, you get an overview of the material, to more easily put things into context. Then you slowly start filling in details until your goals are reached.

Considering speed reading, none of the techniques actually managed to get me reading at 1000 wpm (or improve my reading speed at all). I did however notice that peripheral vision has an influence. Keeping the right distance allows you to read more words at a time. When I'm fully concentrated, I currently read at about 400 to 450 wpm, which is not that bad.

I am currently reading De Bono's Thinking Course. Again, this book won't double your intelligence, but there are a few useful tips in there. Taking a step back and looking at things from different angles, explicitly listing what's positive and negative, the fact that it's more difficult to give constructive feedback, techniques to think out of the box, etc. I'm still trying to digest all this information and take out what is useful for me.

Recently, I've read a few papers about evaluation in my field (Human-Computer Interaction). One of the papers gives examples of how easy it is to critize seminal ideas (e.g. Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, Doug Engelbart's demo of hypertext, Vannevar Bush's idea of a Memex), thereby confirming what De Bono's states

Thanks for your interesting comment!

By: Al

Al — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:32:37 +0000

Sure, be careful with speed reading programs. I would go for a reasonable academically or business oriented study method program instead.

The problem with speed reading is the outrageous claims, the pseudoscience, and the misleading info. The fact is, speedreading has been tested, and it failed. Speedreaders generally miscomprehend. The training involves skimming. Skimming is handy for all readers, but they treat it as if its the default type of reading.

Skimming is useful, but rauding/reading for comprehension should be the real reading workhorse. Basically its healthier to consider the slower pace of reading to be the most powerful. It usually is, because thats where your thinking, deep processing, and imagination work better. If you try to think while skimming or scanning, you will generally be in overload.

All the popular speed reading books use misleading measures of rate/comprehension. They have multichoice tests that you can mostly answer without reading at all. This is true also with the Buzan books.

So, to help efficiency, the answer really is to junk the junk pseudoscience and go for study methods instead. Can you read a 2000 page book in 3 minutes? Yes and no! NO- if you try to read it by speed reading. Yes- if you determine your goal, flick to the page you need by scanning and skimming, and start reading the core information carefully. Then read more slowly (100wpm) the parts that are most important, deep processing by thinking and using the imagination.

You probably don't need a course for that. But if you feel like you want to really work on the skill, then a study methods course will do it.